Oil and Gas Watch

Brendan Gibbons

December 18, 2025

Taxpayer-subsidized carbon capture is driving a backlash in Louisiana, Texas and other states

Driven by billions in taxpayer subsidies, companies are planning hundreds of projects across the U.S. intended to capture carbon dioxide emissions from industry and pump the pollution underground. The wave of carbon capture, transportation, and storage projects is triggering backlash in the form of lawsuits, grassroots activism, and regulatory changes. States in the Gulf Coast and Midwest have had public debates and court battles over some of these projects.

December 19, 2023

Report shows oil and gas companies are rushing to establish taxpayer-subsidized carbon storage projects with little monitoring

A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project shows that federal authorities fail to independently verify that “captured” carbon actually stays underground after companies receive their taxpayer subsidies. The analysis of 21 carbon capture monitoring, reporting, and verification plans approved so far by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shows that the agency allows fossil fuel companies to write their own rules and plans, does not require specific monitoring strategies or technologies, and requires no third-party verification of data self-reported by companies.

Brendan Gibbons

December 7, 2023

Biden Administration proposes to allow disposal of carbon waste beneath national forests

The Biden Administration’s U.S. Forest Service recently proposed a regulatory change related to carbon capture and sequestration, a technology meant to remove or keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Critics of the proposal say that the Forest Service would be granting fossil fuel and carbon disposal companies access to public property for decades, possibly forever, in support of a technology that has not been proven on a large scale and which some call a false solution.

Brendan Gibbons

December 1, 2023

Houston smog worst in 12 years, hitting Latino, Black and lower-income neighborhoods hardest

Air monitoring data show that Houston’s air quality violated health-based standards on 55 days in 2023, more than any other year since 2011. Scorching temperatures combined with emissions, in part from vehicles, oil refineries, chemical plants, and other sources, triggered a rise in ozone across the region. Although smoggy air affects almost everyone, Houston air monitoring data show that Latino and Black neighborhoods and low-income communities were hit the hardest.

Brendan Gibbons

November 21, 2023

Report calls chemical recycling a ‘dangerous deception’ meant to shield the plastics industry

A new report by the environmental group Beyond Plastics takes aim at chemical plastics recycling. It's a rapidly-spreading industry with 11 facilities operating across the U.S. that turn plastic waste into fuel or raw ingredients for new plastics. At least 31 more of these facilities are now planned. Chemical recycling leads to energy waste and toxic air and water pollution, often in minority neighborhoods and low-income areas already struggling with a heavy industrial presence, the report states.

November 14, 2023

Biologist encounters oil-spewing pipe while researching biodiversity in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not an isolated incident.

A group of researchers was on a boat returning from a biodiversity monitoring outing in the Mississippi Delta’s Barataria Bay just south of New Orleans on Saturday, Oct. 21, when they noticed a unplugged well spewing oil into the bay. They reported the spill. Unfortunately, unplugged or abandoned wells like this are common in the Gulf of Mexico, where the number of abandoned or broken wells exceeds 14,000.